Not directly, no. But an electric or fuel cell powered vehicle ultimately powered by wind is a viable option.
Not sure of the potential application to aircraft.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. You aren’t suggesting that ethanol is negative-efficient, and they are actually burning more fuel to produce it than the amount of fuel yielded, are you? I mean, that would be ludicrous. An admittedly quick look at some websites on the subject made it sound like it’s feasible on a large scale, but would cost several times more than petroleum, and that research is being done to make the process more efficient. Is that not true?
You wouldn’t have a cite for that, would you? Not that I’m saying you’re wrong, but I’ve never heard that before. I’m just curious where that info comes from.
You may very well be right, but I don’t think looking at lifestyles of the past necessarily proves anything about the future. Just because we "know what a society that does x looked like doesn’t mean that all societies that do x will be identical.
Ludicrous or not, that is the situation for ethanol production as a whole. While some individual ethanol production processes have become very slightly energy yeilding in very recent years, the world as a whole and the US as a whole puts more energy into ethanol production than the process creates. Even more ridiculous, there is more fossil fuel used in ethanol poduction than the process is capable of replacing.
A reasonable summary here:
The point that you are perhaps missing is that in the US ethanol production is seen as means of promoting the sustainability of the maize industry. It manages to do this without utilising government subsidies, which are seen as negative for many reasons. You can decide for yourself how much of ethanol production is actually driven by environmental concerns.
I can only assume that you posted that at night, and that by ‘right now’ you really meant ‘right now’.
“Every day, more energy falls on the U.S. than we use in an entire year. The total amount of solar energy per year falling on the conterminous 48 states is 1.37 * 1016 kW-h/year - or 46,700 Quads/year - of solar energy falling on the lower 48 states. Compare this to 94.2 Quad/year, the rate of energy consumption in the U.S.in 1997 ( Ref: Renewable Energy Annual 1998, DOE/IEA-0603(98), pg 1.)”
[revision]Incidentally, it might be worth looking into ultra-high speed tube railways to partially replace air travel, by the way-[/revision]
not tailways, I have no idea what tailways are 
of course aircraft fueled by fossil fuel are remarkably efficient, but I was trying to put forward an alternative which uses electical power from solar or nuclear sources.
SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html
Of course, it may be simpler to simply make liquid fuel that aircraft can use from widely availabe hydrocarbons like coal, especially if solar/nuclear power gets cheaper, than building high speed railways all over the place.
From The City in Mind by James Howard Kunstler (New York: The Free Press, 2001), – the chapter on Atlanta, pp. 60, 73-75:
A reminder: The question in the OP is not how many energy resources are there, or exactly how much oil is left. The question is: Will oil peak and oil prices rise, and if so, what will the consequences be to the worlds economy?
Note: Peaking = when demand becomes higher than available supply
As I’ve already said, we will never run out if oil, there will probably be substantial amounts left for many decades. But shortage of oil will likely cause prices to rise. And that’s the key point. Since oil is crucial to the worlds economy, what will happen if oil prices increase?
Break, answering some of Blake’s posts:
-
The total of av available recoverable crude oil is the same in Blake’s cite as in mine. If you add the numbers in the first table of Blake’s cite, the total is around 1,050 billion barrels (year 2000), which is consistent with my cite, 2,000 - 850 = 1,150 (year 1999)
-
New oil fields are of course still discovered, but they are small (you need 10 Giant fields to make up for the failure to discover a single SuperGiant field) “Indeed, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, global discovery of new oil fields peaked in 1962 and has been declining since.”
-
A new oil field where the oil is in multiple pockets is not the same as a field where all the oil is contained in one pocket. In the former you have to drill into each pocket, something that may not be economically viable.
-
And most importantly: You cannot use alternative oil resources in todays cars, aeroplanes and industry. In fact, some alternative resources, like oil shales, isn’t even crude oil, it’s coal oil. There is currently a post in GQ where dopers say you shouldn’t put 3 year old gasoline in new cars. For sure, you cannot put coal oil in your car.
Continuing,
Granted, new technology will make us able to exploit other energy resources than crude oil, and this might be oil shales or tar sand. But this transition from crude oil til other kinds of fossil fuels, or non-fossil fuels, will likely take many decades.
In the mean time crude oil could peak. It has peaked in the US in the 1970’s and in the North Sea in the 1990’s. In these areas demand is already higher than supply. This means the Caspian area and the ME will have to increase their production to make up for the shortage in the western world, and in fast-growing China. However, some indicate that the ME is already close to its production limits, and that they will not be able to increase production in time to make up for the increased demand elsewhere in the world.
This leaves the world in an limbo, a transition between todays crude oil products, and future energy solutions, where there is a possibility of a severe energy shortage.
If there is a major increase in oil prices, this would mean an increase in production cost to the industry, which again should lead to more expensive products. People will buy less, forcing employers to let employees go. We might experience higher inflation rates, maybe similar or worse than those we witnessed in the late 1970’s, when oil prices rose significantly.
It’s very interesting that most of the transportation sector is dependant of crude oil. As Leaper and dal_timgar pointed out, some interesting questions comes to mind:
- Will people buy less cars? How many are employed in the car sector?
- Will people drive less? How many are employed at gas stations?
- Will people avoid surburban ares? What will that do to prices of real estate in the cities?
- Will tourist areas experience a decline in visitors? How many are employed in the tourism sector, in say Hawaii?
Any takers?
IMO, a reduction in oil reserves will have zero affect in our mobility and comfort. We would switch to nukes before we made one step backwards in those areas.
Posted by zwaldd:
Perhaps we would “switch to nukes,” zwaldd – if we could. But we can’t. We can build more nuclear power plants – the Bush administration is pushing for that – but we cannot run our automobiles and airplanes on nuclear power. And we cannot run our national economy without automobiles and airplanes. It is highly doubtful whether any alternative fuel, such as hydrogen or methanol, can be developed to the point where it serves as an effective substitute for gasoline. And even if we could invent a car that runs on hydrogen, retrofitting all existing vehicles for hydrogen fuel would be another matter.
I am not an economist, but the OP is based on a false premise. There is no fixed amont of demand, rather there is a demand curve based on price. Likewise, there is a supply curve based on price. Where these intersect (give or take Enron and OPEC) is the price of oil. There is no “cliff” at which demand suddenly outstrips supply. Rather, as oil becomes more scarce (or more expensive to exploit) or the demand curve rises (because of population increase or industrialization of 3rd world contries) the price will rise gradually to a new equilibrium. This will cause people to use more energy efficient cars, appliances, etc. At some point, alternative forms of energy such as wind, nuclear, biomass, solar, tidal, etc. will become more cost effective than petroleum and people will no longer use it for energy. Instead it will be used for plastics, pharmaceuticals, lubrication, etc.
More expensive energy sources will cause temporary dislocations in the economy, just as the industrial revolution or modern farming did.
Crap, I guess we’ll just have to learn to cut back then.
Planes are a tricky question, but this is certainly false concerning automobiles. The current state of electric cars is adequate (not perfect, certainly, but adequate) for the vast majority of drivers, and these can be run off nuclear electricity. Large trucks are probably another matter, but another solution will likely arise there.
Basically, I agree with Sam Stone’s post. As oil production begins to enter its inevitable decline (and note that it will do so slowly), the price of oil will creep up. This will result in an economic hit, but an economic hit is “a bump in the road”, not “the fall of civilization”. As the price of oil creeps up, a myriad of alternative energy technologies will gain economic viability, and these can be encouraged to reach that point sooner by wise energy policies. No single technology is going to replace oil. Various forms of solar power are fast becoming viable. Wind power already is, and when energy prices rise, complaints about the appearance of windmills will become more muted. Nuclear fission is a tad dirty and dangerous, but not unmanageably so. We have vast quantities of coal, and we may be able to figure out how to exploit it with acceptably low pollution levels. Various forms of wave/tidal energy are available, though so far that’s been a wash. (Get it? A wash. Okay, just shoot me then.)
The thing is, oil won’t run out all at once. There will be decades of declining production where vast quantities of the stuff will still be available. So it will be perfectly viable to replace the easier things first - wind/solar/nuclear electricity, say - and leave the trickier things like jet fuel for later. While the transition away from oil could be quite painful if governmental energy policies encourage continued oil use at the cost of developing reasonable alternatives to the point that alternatives won’t be sufficiently mature soon enough, it’s entirely possible that the end of oil will be nothing worse than a protracted period of recession.
That’s interesting. I wasn’t aware how inefficient the process was. However, the cite you gave actually contradicts the “negative efficiency” position. The Pimentel study that is cited is only one such study, and the paper suggests that it is outdated, and the matter requires “further work”. But at any rate, I can see the point that it looks pretty doubtful that ethanol is ever going to be a panacea.
Yes, I know that farmers are behind the ethanol industry for political reasons, but I don’t know that that’s necessarily a reason to dismiss the possibility of using renewable-resource fuels out of hand. After all, NO energy source is going to be cheap and efficient right out of the starting gate. The R&D has to be done, and if we wait until petroleuml becomes scarce and then start doing R&D, we’re going to have a big problem.
Or How about Thermo Depolymerization Process ?
I wonder if we can make small scale versions of this that will take care of city sewage? By-product will be clean water and heating oil.
You also have to realize methanol is an alcohol- yes, it burns but doesn’t have anywhere near the energy content (btu/lb) as gasoline or diesel.
Drag racers like it since methanol carries some of it’s own oxidizer- thus, the more you can stuff into the cylinder, regardless of how much additional air can also be forced in, the more power you make.
On the other hand, methanol’s energy density is, what, half that of gasoline? I know that converting a gasoline engine to run alky means boring out most of the carburetor passages to at least two to two and a half times the original area.
So to get equivalent horsepower you have to burn roughly twice as much, which means a tankful lasts half as long.
There are also other problems with methanol- it’s hygroscopic, so it pulls moisture out of the air. The moisture contaminates the fuel, leads to tank corrosion, and freezes in the wintertime. Alcohols tend to attack rubber seals and hoses, unless specifically suited for use with the fuel.
No, none of these problems are insurmountable- in fact there’s lots of cars out there today that can be converted over to burn straight methanol with relative ease. (Similarly, most can also be fairly easily converted to CNG or propane.)
But the fact remains- why (at least now, while we still have oil) bother with a harder-to-handle fuel, that costs more, gives you less mileage per tank, and also costs more oil than it saves, in order to make it in the first place?
Most alternative fuels haven’t been “dismissed” as such, they’ve simply proven themselves to be poorer performers over petroleum fuels.
For example, we can, today, make an excellent electric car. Fast, powerful, quiet, and inexpensive enough to compete with midrange sedans. The problem is the battery- nobody wants a car that can only get 60 miles per “tankful” and takes six hours to recharge. They’re also poor choices for cold-weather use: besides the cold sapping battery strength, an electric heater would draw an additional major fraction of power away.
A $30,000 car that goes twenty miles?
Electrics haven’t been “dismissed”- far from it. They’re basically waiting for battery or fuel-cell technology to catch up. But it’s going to be VERY hard to beat gasoline’s energy density.
Same with methanol, propane, natural gas, and so on- actually using them is no problem. Each has it’s quirks, but most or all can be worked around. The problem is production, distribution, and most importantly right now, cost per mile. And believe it or not, R&D is going on, as we speak.
Alien
No, you certainly cannot use alternative oil resources in todays cars. You can’t light, sweet crude oil in today’s cars either. You shouldn’t put any crude oil your vehicle. It isn’t fuel. That’s why we have these things called refineries and cracking towers. No oil straight out of the ground can be put in your car
Sorry Alien but this really does deserve a :rolleyes:
It almost certainly will. Because natural gas is more hydrogen rich, easier to process and easier to transport it has become the fuel of choice fr the 21st century. Natural gas production is increasing faster than oil. As a result oil production obviously doesn’t need to increase as fast. This won’t be down to supply. It will be due to the fact that we have found an alternative energy source.
Interestingly not long ago natural gas was open to exactly the same criticisms Alien has directed at tar sands and oil shale.
But there is no evidence this will happen. It could happen, but the WEO, the WEC and the USGS all say that reserves are increasing faster than cumulative production and that undiscovered resources are increasing.
Again, there is no reason to believe this will happen. As ** DanBlather** so clearly states this “is based on a false premise. There is no fixed amount of demand, rather there is a demand curve based on price”.
Current oil prices are artificially adjusted. They are not supply based. The WEO doesn’t see this changing for at least 30 years.
Alien I look forward to seeing you address some of the more specific points I raised. Particularly the validity of the WRI projection being based on oil economically recoverable in 199 and then using those figures to extrapolate world supplies for the next 20 years.
I also look forward to seeing why several of the assertions you made seem to be in direct contradiction to the world’s authorities and published results.
** blowero**
Not really. It basically says :”If production facilities have large enough scale, it appears that there is a net gain of energy in ethanol production”. I haven’t read the whole thing in detail, but it was the most reputable study I could find in 2 minutes with Google. AFAIK most US an world facilities aren’t large scale. I did read a good report a couple of years ago, and the conclusion was as I said above: the world as a whole and the US as a whole are wasting energy producing ethanol.
I agree wholeheartedly. That’s one of the main reasons why reasoning based on the low energy yields of oil shale and tar sands is invalid.
To be precise, they also noted an increase in efficiency of the process; the conclusion wasn’t based solely on scale.
Actually, the table cites 10 studies, only 4 of which came up with negative value. And 2 of the 4 were Pimentel’s, which the author admits are “out of date”.
Note that it says construction of large-scale plants. It sounds to me like what they are saying is not that it would be efficient if large-scale plants were built, but rather that large-scale plants have been built.
But it would seem that that’s no longer the case. Besides which, the whole argument seems like circular reasoning to me. The question is whether ethanol or other renewable fuels could be helpful in meeting large-scale energy needs in the future. The argument seems to be: It won’t work on a large scale because it only works on a large scale. WTF? I would think it would be pretty obvious that it would have to be done on a scale that’s going to make it worthwhile. I probably couldn’t run a very efficient oil refinery in my backyard, either.
It looks like one might make the case that it’s not efficient enough, but I’m still not seeing as how it’s negative efficient, and especially not inherently negative-efficient.
Yes, I noted that in my first post on the subject.
That’s not an argument that I’ve ever seen made
Beyond that I will try to track down the report I originally read, or something similar. It was very in depth and accounted for as many costs as possible including fertiliser, transport to and from distillery etc.